1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a method for controlling the same, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a technique referred to as near field communication (NFC) that is one of near field wireless communication means has started to be mounted in a mobile terminal such as a smartphone or a tablet personal computer (PC). In specifications of the NFC, three functions are defined. The first is a reader/writer function that enables reading/writing of data from/into a NFC card or a NFC tag. The second is a peer-to-peer function that enables transmission/reception of various data via the NFC. The third is a card emulation function that enables execution of an operation similar to that of the NFC tag.
In an image forming apparatus, an authentication function achieved thus far by using a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag to control permission/inhibition for a user can be replaced by the NFC. The NFC is usable in various devices. Accordingly, a wide variety of data including identification information, personal information such as a telephone number to device information such as an Internet Protocol (IP) address, is transmitted via the NFC. Even when the same information (e.g., ID information) is exchanged between NFC-mounted devices, the ID information may be used for the authentication function on a certain condition while the ID information may be used for registering user information on another condition. In the NFC, a communicable distance is about several centimeters (cm). Thus, data exchange can be performed between the two NFC-mounted devices by an intuitive operation referred to as touching for bringing the NFC-mounted devices into contact with each other. As a technique taking advantage of these features, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2009-531888 discusses a technique that transmits an action related to an object via the NFC to execute the action when a user selects an object displayed on a display in an NFC device that includes the display.
However, according to the technique discussed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2009-531888, if a object to be executed is selected by a user, the user cannot perform an intuitive operation using the NFC.